This invention relates to an apparatus for stiffening textile sheets of various shapes for the manufacture of outerwear garments by coating them with plastic, said apparatus consisting of a conveyor mechanism for the textile sheets and a gravure printing cylinder arranged the conveyor mechanism and having a plastic feed mechanism for supplying fresh coating plastic thereto.
The prior art (see, for example, German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,552,878) relating to fabric stiffening using plastic coatings fails to satisfactorily deal with the problem of the inevitable contamination of the printing cylinder, and particularly the depressions therein, resulting from fluff deposits, etc., or with the utilization of the pasty plastic not used up in a coating operation which remains in the depressions of the printing cylinder. Circumferential grooves on printing cylinders often tend to become clogged by these impurities, and plastic remaining in the grooves hardens and likewise clogs them. This clogging leads to variations in the coating pattern. For example, clogged grooves lead to a non-uniform linear coating and/or a reduction of the coating thickness, and this is undesirable.